Melancholiness over being old, stay away if you don't wanna be depressed and bored

[primroseburrows]

It's very quiet now that diamond_dust06, wayfairer, dancingrain and my patchfire have gone. Quiet is good, but it's, as they say, a little too quiet.

The New York IMAX trip was lovely, despite the tension that often is fandom, and the Being Pickpocketed. On the big, big IMAX screen, I could see that Harry has peachfuzz; I'm all a-squee over it. As far as New York goes, in general, I like Boston far, far better. NY is cold and commercial, IMO, while Boston is a big ol' hometown.


Saturday was also my birthday. Gods, I'm forty-three. It's a scary thing. I've been thinking a lot about aging, and while my life is by no means over, I realise that it could very well be that I've lived half my life (my family doesn't usually make it much past eightyish). I'd like to say that life begins at forty, but I don't really believe that. I feel old, recently. To be truthful, it's not just recently. I've been thinking along these lines for a couple of years, now.

Tonight I'm going to mr_t00by's eighth-grade graduation. He's been in the same school since he was five years old, in September of 1994. Now he's moving on, and we're not sure where. He's my youngest.

dmbgrl1026 is my oldest. She'll be 22 on October of this year. It's going by too, too fast. I'm not sure whether the day she was born feels like last week or a century ago. I do know that I'm feeling my age and I don't like it. I look at my hands and I see the dry crepe-y skin that's replaced the smoothness of youth. There are bags under my eyes, lines around my mouth that pull it into a fixed frown that make people think I'm perpetually angry. I have aches and pains in the mornings. I hate it.

I've had so many goals and dreams for my life that haven't manifested, and I honestly can't say that I have any new ones that are remotely realistic. I guess what I need to do is reexamine and reevaluate. I've achieved things, don't get me wrong; I'm actually a registered Nurse, and I know I should be proud of that, but I usually think eh, it's not really what I would have chosen if I could've done it over.

I've been thinking seriously about moving away from here entirely. (Read: England. out of the country. But really, how long do I have to start over? I've started so late, and all.

So, bleh, I'm melancholy and I guess this is a wanky post. I should block comments, but I guess I'm craving a little sympathy. *sigh*

I'm probably just not used to the quiet after all the days of lovely noise.

*hugs wayfairer, diamond_dust06, patchfire, and especially dmgrl026 and punkypower414 was our saviour this weekend. If it wasn't for her, all would be lost and wayfairer and I would still be sitting at the airport. Everyone friend her, and adore.

Comments

[karabou.livejournal.com]

*sympathizes* Sorry to hear you're feeling so down, especially when it's something that isn't really something you can stop (well, you can stop it, I just don't think you'd want to ;).

I don't think it's too late for moving, or trying to live differently, at all. Time doesn't go by all that fast. But if you wait long enough it will be.. know what I mean? Best of luck... *hugs*

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

Dude. Happy Birthday (a little late)! I had plans to write some Contingency-verse for you, but they didn't pan out. I still have the plans, though... it will just be late. :)

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!! I had no idea. *hangs head in shame*

Also who got pickpocketed?!

[patchfire.livejournal.com]

Kelly did! When we went to get some dinner we went up to this deli where dancingrain and her brother and diamond_dust06 had eaten lunch and whilst Kelly was standing in line, someone grabbed her wallet out of her bag. :/

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

OMG! How horrible.

[littlealex.livejournal.com]

Gah, birthday. I should really write these things down... Happy Birthday, though, belatedly. :*

And it is never too late to change your life. My dad is the best example of this ever. He got an architecture degree at uni because people told him it was a thriving industry (and he believed them *g*). He graduated after meeting my mum, and did something almost completely unrelated to architecture for the next ten(ish) years: drawing pictures of houses and mapping the floor plans. He was his own boss, and it took a lot of hard work, but he did it. Then, I guess a couple of years before we moved, he started working at Macmedia, a company that was all about the internet and computer programming (something he had been into when he was fourteen). A couple of years later, when he was 40, he picked up everything (including us) and moved to Boston, working as The Webmaster for an up-and-coming magazine company. As you know, we were there for seven years, and his responsibilities changed a lot over time, but he was always doing what he wanted. Now, at 46, he moved us all back to Australia. He's still doing computer programming, but that's because that's what he likes to do.

Not to mention my mum! She didn't go to uni, she had jobs with a church-run counselling help line, as a receptionist at the uni admissions office, and in my living memory she did typesetting for real estate agents (who often used my dad's drawings, natch ;)). After seven years of not working in America, she's got a job here as a bit of a boffin at a non-profit closed captioning organisation.

Her parents? After surviving WWII in Holland, another war in SE Asia, family rifts, and two kids, they picked up and moved to Australia, where only one of them half-spoke the language. They were in their thirties when they moved.

So I remain firmly convinced that it is never, ever too late to change. Re-evaluate and re-examine, yes. But don't think it's too late for anything, because it never is. *HUGS!*

[way2.livejournal.com]

Happy Belated Birthday, sweetie!
*commiserates on the age thing*

In four years, you'll have a freedom you haven't had in your whole life, and you have a credential that can get you hired just about anywhere. Adventures may ensue yet!

[robinhoo.livejournal.com]

Aaaagh! I missed your birthday?! I am aghast, Kel. Happy belated returns of the day, despite the fact that you are not loving the age that day brought with it.

I can commiserate on the age thing, too, actually. I'm staring down the nose of 29 (yes, I know, 29 isn't old, 29 is a great age, I'm happy to be 29, really), but I'm also looking at the whole I'm-still-not-married-and-far-more-importantly-I-don't-have-any-kids thing. Blehhh. But I have to constantly remind myself, hello, Robin, people are having kids into their 40's these days. Likewise you must remind yourself that people who are 43 are all the time doing big, amazing, life-changing things. Think, for example, about the fact that no U.S. president has ever been as young as you are. (How old was Kennedy? Whatever.) Sure, they spend time working to that position, but you think moving into the White House and being the supreme high mucky-muck of the world's biggest superpower ain't a big life-changer? C'mon.

I lived in Ireland for a year or so right after college -- backpacked around and was homeless and had a blast. I did it to escape some crappage that was going on in my life here in the U.S. Granted, I learned that you can't outrun grief and the like, but never let it be said that running away to a different country can't be an incredibly good thing to do. Talk about learning what it means to be self-reliant, wow! It's scary, but you can totally amaze yourself with the things you never knew you were capable of. While I wouldn't want to do the homeless/backpacking thing again, I'd go back to Ireland in less time than it took somebody to get the word out of her mouth if I had the financial ability. I'm totally behind you on this. If you feel England's where you want to be, I say, DO IT, CHICA. You know some people over there, right? I mean, people from fandoms and all? And the groovy thing is, if you get over there and it's not what you want it to be, come the hell back and do something different. With your degree, people the world over are going to be clamouring to hire you. You're in a prime position to do this, if it's what your heart really wants.
From "the glass is half-full" camp, let me point out that, even if you have, as you suggest, reached the midway point o' life, the fact is, you have as much time ahead of you as has gone before, and you don't have to spend 20-some years of it in school and tied to other people like parents and spouses and little children. This part is all yours.

Okay, suddenly I'm jealous.